Chocolate will not solve domestic difficulties

If you need to buy a $170 heart-shaped box of chocolates, it's probably too late

Updated 8:12 am, Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Business is brisk as candy maker Tom Krause boxes up some chocolate covered strawberries for Valentines Day at his store Krause's Homemade Candy store Feb. 12, 2013 in Colonie, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Business is brisk as candy maker Tom Krause boxes up some chocolate...

Candy maker Tom Krause holds up his biggest chocolate box for Valentines Day at his store Krause's Homemade Candy store Feb. 12, 2013 in Colonie, N.Y. He mentioned that he rarely sells more than one of these 8 pound boxes a year for Valentines Day. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Candy maker Tom Krause holds up his biggest chocolate box for...

Business is brisk for Valentines Day at Krause's Homemade Candy store Feb. 12, 2013 in Colonie, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Business is brisk for Valentines Day at Krause's Homemade Candy...

Business is brisk for Valentines Day at Krause's Homemade Candy store Feb. 12, 2013 in Colonie, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Business is brisk for Valentines Day at Krause's Homemade Candy...

Business is brisk as candy maker Tom Krause, left boxes up some sweets for customer for Valentines Day at Krause's Homemade Candy store Feb. 12, 2013 in Colonie, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Business is brisk as candy maker Tom Krause, left boxes up some...

Business is brisk for Valentines Day at Krause's Homemade Candy store Feb. 12, 2013 in Colonie, N.Y. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

Business is brisk for Valentines Day at Krause's Homemade Candy...

George Garney, foreground, chief of department for the General Schuyler Emergency Squad and Jamie Barton, chief operating officer, start to create arrangements with roses on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013 at the squad house on Route 29 in the Town of Saratoga. This is the second year the squad will be selling roses for Valentine's Day as a fund raiser. Customers can buy anywhere from one rose to dozens. They also sell roses in vases. The roses will be for sale on Wednesday and Thursday from 11am to 6pm. The squad has over 120 dozen roses for sale. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)

COLONIE — On the top shelf behind the counter of a frenzied Krause's Homemade Candy shop on Tuesday morning sat a row of heart-shaped candy boxes in ascending size from left to right. To the far right towered the granddaddy of Valentine's Day gifts, an arm's-length wide and weighing as much a small bowling ball: A $169.99, eight-pound box of chocolate.

Krause's, on Central Avenue, will probably only sell one such box this year. (With tax, the tab for the roughly 190 pieces of candy runs north of $180.) That sale likely won't come on Red Wednesday — Valentine's Day Eve, the Black Friday of the candy business and the busiest day of the year for the store. Rather, the owner said, such a box usually is bought just before closing on Valentine's Day.

What would compel such a purchase? More importantly, what did the buyer do that was so heinous?

"Oh, my," said 46-year-old Ray Brownell of Niskayuna, contemplating the potential transgressions. "You crashed the car. ... Your forgot to pick up the kid at practice. ... You said a few bad words in conversation.

"That is a big-(blank) thing of chocolate."

Brownell was confident he could go with a more traditional choice: "I'm going the one-pound route. I'm not on the bad list."

Here's the thing: Everyone interviewed — everyone — said that if a person needed to buy a $170 box of chocolates to mend a domestic dust-up, the situation would be so bad that a huge box of chocolates would not get the job done.

"She would kill me if I bought that much," said Bruce Fanning, 51, of Wynantskill. "I would have to do something other than that. That's not going to fix it."

Liz Van Buren of Schenectady makes one thing clear: She loves chocolate. But "if anybody gave me a $170 box of chocolate, I would be very upset. It would be a waste of money — and too many calories."

And the 52-year-old laughs at the chance it would be a get-out-of-jail-free card to the giver,

"Candy wouldn't do it," she said.

Owner Tom Krause wonders about the big box buyer, too, but he straddles the line between pastor and attorney.

"You think they did something wrong, but you don't ask," he said. "It's client-candymaker privilege. We don't judge here."

Would Krause himself consider going the big-box route to escape domestic difficulty? Nah; that would be like taking work home with him.

"Candy doesn't get me out of trouble," he said. "Usually jewelry does the trick."